I have a fairly simple question that doesn't seem so obvious to me when going from Tableau Prep into Tableau Desktop. But that's only because I'm still new to Tableau.

Are the outputs you create in Prep based on live data? I do not want to use extracts. The confusion here is by which the process is a little different... that what I've been doing....

1. Choose data source (which in my case is usually an Excel reference file and via a Oracle database connection).

- The confusion is selecting my file (output) that Tableau Prep saved for me when I ran the flow.

- Do I just open the .tds file? Is this a direct link to my data that will auto-refresh just as it would if I directly connected to my Oracle Database?

1a. If the .tds file is the one I choose and is a live data connection, does that mean each 'Output' I create via Tableau Prep will have to be individually added in Tableau Desktop?

1b. If the .tds file is not the one I choose, then could someone define the process as far as creating the Output/Running the Flow and inserting what you've created in Tableau Prep into Tableau Desktop?

Publishing to (in my case) my company's Tableau Server allows me to connect directly to the data source in real-time... LIVE data. Yes you can save as you've describe above, but you can publish to a server and with the right authentication, you can publish as live data.

Thanks for the reply..... So some things have changed over the last few weeks.....

1. I received access to publish on our company's Tableau Server... so creating a flow and publishing it to the server is now possible.

The lead up to the problem....

I connect to our live Oracle database through Flow. Then add-in joins, create unions, clean-up data, etc.... then I create the Output and publish to our company's Tableau Server.

The Problem:

The data I publish isn't live (as you said, it apparently doesn't publish as a .tds file).... I assumed that because my Oracle data comes right out of the live database; when my data refreshed it would be with real-time data... However, it isn't real-time. (i.e. the Flow I published on 5.18 still only has data from that date, nothing new).

I just cannot fathom why Tableau would put out a preparation software that doesn't account for LIVE updating. I'm still green in the Tableau world... but even as a new user... why would any data analyst use Prep if it cannot (in it's fullest form) allow LIVE connections? My time wasn't wasted... my static data did need to be cleaned up... but I feel like I wasted a lot of time using Tableau Prep to manipulate my data the exact way I needed it, only to be told... I guess I just don't understand the specific details of why this would be so difficult to do from a software development perspective.

I understand your issue, and I also understand why you want a live connection in Prep rather than a Tableau Desktop Custom SQL. Desktop and Prep are two different products that do different things. A custom SQL in Tableau Desktop is not a solution to data prep processing needs.

Here is a link to another thread that I think could help you. I am not sure if it connects live or if it runs a refresh based on a schedule you set. I have not used this solution...yet. However, I expect to need something like this in the very near future.

OK, let's discuss the proverbial elephant in the room. If I understand this correctly, it is currently impossible to publish live data to Server using Tableau Prep. With that being the case, the only recommendation made in this forum has been to use a custom SQL query in Desktop. Let's just say that my experience with using custom SQL queries has not made me a happy camper. They are almost always prone to snags, gotchas, errors, and generally bad data. The whole reason for using Tableau Prep in the first place is to veer as far away from custom SQL queries as much as possible. So why hasn't Tableau Prep made it possible to publish live data to an internal server? Maybe someone reading this will have an excellent answer, or maybe a better one than what I have seen thus far.

You will probably never be able to connect "Live" to Tableau Prep since it allows integration of multiple different data sources, the best effort Tableau could would be allowing users to "run flow on workbook opening" which would run the full flow from Tableau Prep and dump the data in a temporary Hyper-database and then connect to that. This is how connecting to Stored Procedures currently works in Tableau, rerunning the Stored Procedure with each user interaction.

It makes complete sense that you cannot live query Prep flows, since they are not data, they are flows. The data generated from flows can already be published to Tableau Server as extracts.

Regarding your experiences with Custom SQL, I use it often and have none of the issues you describe, if you are generating bad data with Custom SQL, you should probably focus on either the underlying data quality or your SQL capabilities since Custom SQL just allows you to query "through" a Custom SQL statement which is then treated by Tableau as a subselect.